[After/during
the texts and subsequent call.
It is quite literally a dark and stormy night at the high school, which is completely dark and abandoned. Every single cliché available is on site: the unoccupied silence, the periodic thunder, the spattered shower building up to a downpour, the landscape lights out and the windows already glistening. Even neighboring streetlights are out.
The only light immediately available is from two sidelights of Stiles'
abandoned jeep, parked askew into the handicap spot with the driver's side door hanging open, and flashing its emergencies in periodic ticks of orange floods. The orange light is like a heartbeat, outlining everything before the darkness returns. Beat, orange lighting up the wet lawn and glistening sidewalk. Beat, orange: the unoccupied classroom windows, spattered with rain and shadow. Beat, orange: the padlocked doors and soaked bricks. Beat, orange, darkness.
Nearing the school at the right angle, one can see the source of the problem: a downed streetlight, a long candycane of metal, has fallen from the edge of the parking lot and landed on one of the buildings. No classes are going to be held there tomorrow, but since it only caught the edge of the roof, it simply looks strange and tilted there in the silhouette of the emergency light, not catastrophic.
Beat, orange, darkness. Thunder. Beat, orange, black, beat, orange--a sudden white hot piece of lightning cuts out of the sky, and a spotlight taking up the whole property in one eye-watering flash, and in the ensuing silence following the thunder, the sound of Stiles banging on the metal door of the basement sneaks through the pause.]